Explore "To the Wife of a Sick Friend" by Edna St. Vincent Millay on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Shelter this candle from the wind.
Hold it steady. In its light / The cave wherein we wander lost
Glitters with frosty stalactite, / Blossoms with mineral rose and lotus, / Sparkles with crystal moon and star, / Till a man would rather be lost than found: / We have forgotten where we are.
Shelter this candle. Shrewdly blowing / Down the cave from a secret door
Enters our only foe, the wind.
Hold it steady. Lest we stand, / Each in a sudden, separate dark, / The hot wax spattered upon your hand, / The smoking wick in my nostrils strong, / The inner eyelid red and green / For a moment yet with moons and roses,- / Then the unmitigated dark.
Alone, alone, in a terrible place, / In utter dark without a face, / With only the dripping of the water on the stone, / And the sound of your tears, and the taste of my own.